Seized by Lynne Cantwell

Author:Lynne Cantwell [Cantwell, Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-03-19T04:30:00+00:00

Chapter 8

I left Joseph at the door of the coffee shop – he turned right to go to the bus station, and I turned left to walk home. He very nearly insisted on walking with me, but I strong-armed him. I told him the worst thing I was likely to run across on the 16th Street Mall was a purse snatcher, which I was pretty sure I could handle myself.

Again, I was tempted to push him, and again I resisted the impulse. This new power of mine was a heady thing, but I mistrusted it. For starters, I was still ambivalent about White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman recruiting me, and I wasn’t yet sure I wanted to be on Her team at all. I knew for sure that I wouldn’t have joined if She’d given me a choice. Using the power She had given me seemed tantamount to agreeing to help Her.

I was also ambivalent about having power at all. I knew there was a kink in my personality where most people kept their ambition. Brock wasn’t the only law school classmate of mine who had been mystified at my decision to work summers for Legal Aid; most of them, ultimately, wanted to practice law in order to make as much money and gain as much power as possible. I’ve never known why I didn’t want to be like everyone else in that regard – whether I didn’t trust myself with it, or didn’t feel as if I deserved it, or what. This persuasive power the goddess had given me felt like another temptation to join the world of Money/Power/Fame that I had already, instinctively, rejected. On one hand, I wondered if I could use it to have anything in the world that I desired. On the other hand, it felt deceitful – but in a weird kind of backward way, as if I would be pushing the other person into lying to himself or herself about how much he or she wanted to give me what I desired.

Too, I didn’t really understand how it worked and I felt uncomfortable about testing it. I wondered if Shannon would be willing to be a guinea pig, and then I wondered whether it would work on her if she knew I was trying to push her.

I also realized that some of the tension I’d felt over the past few days was overcompensation. I was being very careful not to utter anything that could be construed as a command, just in case the push took over. And I didn’t know the reach of my ability, either. It had worked on the driver ahead of me who couldn’t even hear me. Would it work over the phone? Over a distance – and if so, how far? Would it work only on humans, or on animals as well?

Would it work on gods?

Was that what I was supposed to do? White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman wanted to bring Jehovah to heel – but what if my

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